PNNL

Abstract

A very simple appliance interface was suggested by this author and his co-authors during Grid-Interop 2007. The approach was based on a successful collaboration between utilities, a major appliance manufacture, and the manufacturer of a load control module during the U.S. Department of Energy’s Grid Friendly Appliance project. The suggested approach was based on the assumption that demand-response objectives could be effectively communicated to and from many small electrical loads like appliances by simply agreeing on the meaning of the binary states of several shared connector pins. It was argued that this approach could pave the way for a wave of demand-response-ready appliances and greatly reduced expenses for utilities’ future demand-response programs. The approach could be supported by any of the many competing serial communication protocols and would be generally applicable to most end-use devices.